In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

The Christian Church

Peter

Chief of Christ’s disciples.

Paul

Early Christian apostle who argued that Gentiles, if they converted to Christ, were not obliged to follow the Jewish Law.

Ignatius

Supposedly appointed Bishop of Antioch by Peter himself, he was the first Christian to deploy the word

Christianismos

—“Christianity.”

Basilides

The second-century author of a heretical gospel that claimed Christ had not died on the cross.

Marcion

Another second-century heretic. He viewed the deity of the Old Testament as inferior to the True God, the Father of Christ, and dismissed the entire Old Testament itself as worthless.

Tertullian

Born in Carthage in the mid-second century, he was the first Christian to define the Trinity. He died around 220.

Arius

A priest from Alexandria who argued that God the Father had existed before God the Son. His teachings were condemned as heretical at the Council of Nicaea in 325.

Athanasius

Bishop of Alexandria who took a leading role against Arius at the Council of Nicaea, and was the first to prescribe the contents of what is still the Christian New Testament.

Cyril

Bishop of Jerusalem in the fourth century.

Epiphanius

A bishop from Cyprus who compiled an exhaustive encyclopedia of heresies in the fourth century.

Jerome

A translator of the Bible into Latin who settled permanently in Bethlehem in 388.

Nestorius

Bishop of Constantinople who was condemned as a heretic in 431 for arguing that the relationship between the human and the divine in Christ had been one of coexistence rather than union.

Dioscorus

Thuggish Bishop of Alexandria who helped to provoke the summoning of the Council of Chalcedon.

Theodoret

A Syrian bishop in the first half of the fifth century who took a keen interest in the Arabs.

Sozomen

A historian from Gaza who in around 440 published a history of the Church that repeatedly touched on Arab affairs.

Simeon the Elder

The first and most famous of the pillar-topping saints known as stylites.

Simeon the Younger

The most celebrated stylite of the sixth century.

Paul

An Egyptian monk appointed by Justinian to be Bishop of Alexandria.

Zoilus

A Syrian sent by Justinian to replace Paul as Bishop of Alexandria.